Five Thoughts for Friday: The Final Push

The Ottawa Senators played a terrible game last night. I guess Dylan Cozens scored? That was nice, I suppose. As Ross said in the recap: "The Sens were thoroughly outworked, outskilled, and outstrategied in an embarrassing loss on home ice." It was bad, bad, bad.

The good news is that Ottawa remains ensconced in the first Wild Card spot, three points up on the Montreal Canadiens and five clear of the New York Islanders (when did that happen?!). They still control their own destiny. So, in the spirit of looking to a brighter future, here are five things that the Sens need to do down the stretch to ensure they make it to the post-season:

Take Care of Business Against the Bad Teams That Want to Lose

Ottawa has fourteen games left on the schedule, two of which are against the Buffalo Sabres, and one each against Chicago and the Philadelphia Flyers. These teams stink, and, though they will never say it out loud, they want to lose to improve their position in the draft lottery. Going 3-1 in those four games would allow the Sens to go just 5-5 in their other games for an 8-6 record overall, and finish with 93 points. For the Isles to get past Ottawa they'd need to be 11-3 in their last fourteen. The players on these teams won't just be laying down but the task remains the same: win the easy ones, and it won't even take that much in the tougher match-ups.

Get the Good Linus Ullmark

I am a known Ullmark booster, so this comment should be taken with that in mind. Since his arrival in the nation's capital, the Swedish goalie has been good. He's sometimes flashed the form that won him the Vezina trophy, as Trevor alluded to last week, but it wouldn't be unfair to say that there have been ups and downs. The Sens are a good, but not great team – and good, but not great teams often need their goalie to steal them a game or two. It's not like Ottawa is facing particularly stiff competition down the stretch, but Ullmark is still almost certainly going to have to be at his peak on a couple of occasions. Barring injury, Ullmark will likely start 11 or 12 of those 14 remaining games and getting the best version of him at least some of the time is crucial.

Get Nick Jensen Healthy

Jensen's play has been one of the better stories of this season, but his recent absence has revealed just how thin the Sens' depth on the blueline really is. I have to mildly disagree with my esteemed colleague Ross' article from Wednesday: the third pairing has in fact been pretty poor (even compared to other third pairs!) but the Sens have been able to withstand that weakness because of the spectacular performance of the top two pairs. That said, with Jensen down we have a situation where Travis Hamonic is back on the third pair. I know that some feel Hamonic is unduly scrutinized but his 26.67 GF% is 633rd out of 637 players who have played 300 mins at 5v5. I'm just not sure what else to say here, we can debate his various qualities as a player but the results are the results. If the Sens are serious about a play-off run, he can't be on one of the top two pairs.

Continued Dominance from the Top Line

In the good news department, the Claude Giroux-Brady Tkachuk- Tim Stützle trio are absolutely crushing the competition.

Here are the top-20 forward lines at 5v5 sorted by CF% (minimum 210 minutes - an estimate of the top two lines from every team) from @evolving-hockey.com. EDM, FLA, and CAR each have three lines that crack the top-20. CGY, UTA, and NYR surprised me here... McDavid and Draisaitl did not.

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— EvolvingWild (@evolvingwild.evolving-hockey.com) March 20, 2025 at 6:18 PM

Travis Green, like DJ Smith before him, has occasionally felt compelled to break up the line to create more balance, but, again like DJ Smith before him, has always eventually ended up reuniting the group. They're simply too good together. If the Sens make the post-season, they'll also almost certainly be asked to play a lot of the toughest minutes against the other team's top line. As goes the top line, so go the Sens' forwards.

Survive until They Can Take Advantage of Some Home Cookin'

The Sens are a robust 20-10-2 at home, and a more meagre 16-17-3 on the road. The good news is that there aren't many road games left, and that if Ottawa can just scrape together a few points, particularly since two of those road games are against the Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins, then they should be in a great spot to have a big finishing kick: Ottawa concludes the season with eight of their last nine games at home. If the Sens are still holding onto a play-off spot by the end of March, when that aforementioned final stretch begins, then things will be looking pretty good indeed.